Use KindleGen and Kindle Previewer to create the electronic edition and check quality. The linux version of calibre is used to check the generated .mobi file, and to tag and edit metadata. Then, upload the generated .mobi file to the Kindle Direct Publishing web-app, and fill in all rest of the metadata in a browser.

This file is then exported as a transparent bitmap, at 2560 x 1600 @ 300dpi.

Next step is to process it in CS6 Photoshop on Mac OS X. The following transforms:

Layer->Flatten

Image->Image Size to 2560 x 1600

File->Save As jpeg, 9, 10, 11 qualities, but adjust to hit below 800k

HTML doc

Re-write example to suit Gone Awry, based on prototyping with a DocBook 5.0 XML form to generate the beginning HTML. Take this, edit the .opf and .ncx files to create a manifest and a table of contents/touch list, and bundle it up with the toplevel “images” directory such that the resulting filenames in the generated “gone-awry.opf” file are correct.

Kindle (KF8) doc

Unpack kindle binaries on linux, and run on the master list of files (the .opf file) as:

kindlegen gone-awry-v2.html -c0 -verbose gone-awry.opf

That should chug along, spewing a bunch of information. Pay attention, and fix any issues. The last bit of information before a successful creation of the .mobi file is related to the file size, and download time. Something like:

From this, one can make back-of-the-envelope calculations about the royalty rates. For 70% royalties, the publisher must pay Amazon $0.15 per 1MB of .mobi file delivered. Thus, for a 40MB file, the delivery charge would be $6. So, the price would have to be more than this to break even. For 30% royalties, there is no delivery fee so pricing could feasibly drop below $6.

Future work would be to shift to SVG containers, improving text legibility by un-rasterizing the text or presenting a vector text layer, and look at ways to add “scroll anchors” such that a “page flick” motion would speed through the next couple of pages before alighting on the specified anchor.

Instead of a book composed of a sequence of all-the-same size pages and spreads of two facing pages, Gone Awry is intended to be a linear list of pages with individual spread sizes constructed as multiples of one, two, three, or four individual pages. (This is what the second column on the index means.)

So, instead of opening a conventional book and seeing a spread of page one and two, Gone Awry is intended to be displayed as page-one-two-three-four as one spread, page-five-six as the second spread, etc. In this way, the bound object can tessellate out, like a solar sail. Expanding out from the confines of the space occupied by the bound object to occupy two, three, four times the size.

Is this what electronic books will look like, when iPads have stretchable screens? Micro-ized projection? The physical book form adapts to a new form after examining the opportunity offered by electronic counterparts. What is a book? What is a scroll?

If it is to be viewed all at once (let’s admit this is unlikely due to the massive size), then the spread end and beginning are expected to form one plane, and the next spread is intended to be at an angle veering off. So, it would be viewed as a long squiggle. This is different than Yve Klein’s Store Poème (Scroll Poem, 1960) although this work is charmingly related in literary genre and total length.

Pages as per version two. Final composition shifted for the version three scaling operation.

The paper is KM04, Natural Kozo with Gampi from Hiromi Paper in Santa Monica. Each 25″ x 38″ sheet is cut in half vertically, and then imaged via high-resolution inkjet.